2025 Sundance Film Festival Movie Review: Jimpa

Sophie Hyde’s Jimpa is an insightful and powerful drama about modern queerness, family, and parenting.

Olivia Colman stars as Hannah, a filmmaker working on her next film project, which centers around her relationship with her father, which she thinks is drama-free. She makes a trip to Amsterdam with her husband (Daniel Henshaw) and non-binary teenager Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde) to visit her gay father (John Lithgow), or Jimpa as Frances calls him. When Frances tells Hannah that she wants to live with Jimpa for a year because they are upset with their local queer community and feels Amsterdam would be better for their life, it challenges Hannah’s parenting beliefs while also bringing up past issues with her father.

The screenplay for Jimpa is sensational. It is loaded with depth, detail, human drama, and emotion. Hyde co-wrote the screenplay with Matthew Cormack and they imbed the film into queer culture and bring up tough issues the queer community is facing today, from acceptance to the courage to live the life you want and not hold anything back to how queerness has evolved over the decades. As a straight man, this was eye-opening to watch, as I was unaware that some of these issues were plaguing the queer community. The film asks some tough questions and while not all of them get answered, they certainly will bring up questions and conversations.

Jimpa also features a lot of interesting topics about family and family dynamics. Hannah thinks the relationship with her father is drama-free, which is why she is struggling to get her new film made because there is no drama. But with her visit to her father and her teenager wanting to live with him, she starts to think about her past and realizes it might not have been as perfect as it was. This also causes her to question her parenting of her child. Colman and Lithgow are sensational, bringing tons of emotional depth to their characters and perfectly portraying a father and daughter with different ideas about parenting and life. Aud Mason-Hyde is a revelation and is the heart and soul of the film.

There’s a lot to think about with Jimpa when it comes to the queer community and family dynamics, and Hyde takes their time diving into the issues that are brought up. The film does drag in the third act and you start to feel its runtime, but the emotional journey you are on with Jimpa is worth taking thanks to the layered screenplay and the superb acting.

Jimpa premiered in the Premieres category at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Follow Kevflix on Twitter, Instagram, and Letterboxd @kevflix, and Facebook by searching Kevflix.